Haley O’Brian scowled at her idiot co-worker as she stood, arms crossed, hip propped against the counter. “You did what?”
“I tripped over one of the paving stones just outside the ring. It came loose and the pouch with the scrolls inside was right there beneath.” His hands came up defensively when he caught her facial expression. “Okay, so I know it’s not technically legal, but I found the scrolls. Is it a crime to want to know what they say? Come on, in the name of science! When I saw they were Ogham, I knew you’d be the best person to translate.”
“What is this, finders keepers? Are we in third grade now?” She exhaled violently.
“First of all, that site is cursed. I told you that when I translated the symbols on the standing stones. Second of all, the best person to look at them is the governmental liaison.
They’ve got their own scholars and they’ll let us in on this if we go through them. You can’t take antiquities from a site. It’s illegal. For fuck’s sake, Jerry, you know that.
You’re endangering the entire Foundation over this.”
She pushed away from the counter and kept her eyes averted from the pouch on the table. God how she wanted to get her hands on those scrolls! But if you took shortcuts in their profession, it got around and you didn’t get grants. No grants, no work. No work and she’d be using her shiny degree at Copy Cafeteria for minimum wage.
And anyway, despite her modern upbringing, her grandmother was a witch. Or something. Haley didn’t quite know what but it involved magic and she’d just gotten around to admitting she’d been too chicken to really ask.
Haley’s parents may have disdained what they said was her gran’s superstition but that ring of stones lay heavy with vengeful magic. The symbols were a curse to keep something in. It seemed wrong to break the law to read the scrolls on a lie, like giving in to whatever maliciousness the site was bound by. It wasn’t superstitious to be smart. No way. She was calling Conall and not because the very sight of him made her tingly in all the right places either. Uh uh.
“Haley, we might never get to see them if you tell the liaison,” Jerry whined.
She waved him away impatiently, annoyed at him over the scrolls and for interrupting the beginnings of a very salacious fantasy about the sexy Conall Shaunessey.
“Jerry, I’m not going to do it. And if I don’t you’re screwed because I’m the best you’ve got. Anyone else with my skills will turn your ass in. You signed the contract. I’m a board member and I say tell the damned liaison. You’re putting the scrolls back, right now. And then you’ll call him from the site.”
She saw the calculation on his face and wanted to groan aloud.
“I can’t believe you’re going to play goody-goody on this. But okay.” He held his hands up again hastily as she moved toward him, wanting to smack him upside his head.
“I’ll take it back. But you have to come with me. You make the call and go with Shaunessey when he comes to take the scrolls. That way you can push your way into the room when they’re translated.”
It wasn’t like she didn’t want to take a gander at the scrolls—she did. They called to her. She wanted to know what was on them. Having that pouch there within reach, knowing no one had read them in centuries ate away at her.
“Okay, let’s go. Maybe I can look at them at the site before the liaison gets there.”
He jumped up, grabbing the bag before heading out the door as she followed in his wake.
After a short walk through a prototypical sunny forest glade, the trees opened up and she saw the ring. The stones nearly sang in the sunlight shafting over their gray surface.
Cursed or not, it was a place thick with magic and Haley’s own responded in kind, surging through her as like recognized like.
As she stood there, a sense of expectancy hung in the air. Something big lay in the shadows of the future, coiled up and ready to spring. A shiver passed through Haley as she attempted to shake the feeling off.
Haley knew what she needed to do was to give in and go visit her grandmother and get some answers. She responded deeply to the space and it seemed foolhardy not to ask.
Nearly as stupid as the fight that drove her from her grandmother’s house six months prior.